3 Clowns With a Message On Ritual, Art and Comedy

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

One of the most joyous moments in "Tubes,"
the delightfully circusy performance piece at La Mama, comes when its
three creators, known as the Blue Man Group, enact a
percussion-and-paint ritual that tickles one's primal fantasies of
making noise and splatter.

Standing side by side in front of
matching kettledrums, the trio of unsmiling clowns, their faces and
necks painted blue, begin tapping out a martial drum roll while pouring
red, yellow and blue paint onto their instruments. Drumming, they kick
up multicolored fountains of spray that rhythmically rise and fall.
Plunging canvases into the gaudy spindrift, they then create instant
"action" paintings.

"Tubes" is one of messiest performance
pieces ever staged in a New York City theater, and also one of the most
delightful, recalling the euphoric high jinks of Penn and Teller and
the Kipper Kids, with percussion added. Before the performance, those
in the front rows are handed sheets of plastic wrap to protect them
from gooey substances that will be squirted from nozzles attached to
the trio's Tin Man-style armor. Later, a volunteer is taken backstage,
and a video screen shows him being swabbed with black paint, suspended
upside down on a rope and swung gently against a canvas.

"Tubes"
takes its title from the show's environment of hollow rubber tubes
draped all around the theater with their ends dangling within reach of
the audience. Those who put their ears to the tubes will hear all sorts
of weird squawks and jabber. The show culminates with a disco
bacchanalia in which the tubes begin to gyrate as a strobe light
flashes, and the performers wade into the audience and dance on the
tables while the theater fills with white streamers. Breaking Down a
Wall

The deliriously antic blend of music, painting and
clowning has its semi-serious side. In an amusing spoof of art
criticism, the three performers, who never speak, pose as a panel of
experts sharing their thoughts about a stuffed fish held in front of a
canvas. Those thoughts, alternately pretentious and irreverently funny,
are paraded in red dotted letters across electric signs attached to
their heads.

The Blue Man Group was formed three years ago by
Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink, three caterers for Glorious
Foods in Manhattan. Mr. Goldman had a background in computers. Mr.
Stanton had studied acting and liked to build things. And Mr. Wink, a
student of African and Latin drumming, had played with several
post-punk rock bands.

"When we first got together, we didn't
know what we wanted to do except find a style that had passion and that
would break down the wall between performer and audience," Mr. Wink
said the other day. "Gradually, we developed this character named
Blueman, whom we think of as a single entity, but in three parts.
Though he's extremely human, he also has strict limitations. He can't
speak or move his arms, but he's got a passionate interest in color."

The
group's first public performance, "Funeral for the 80's," was a
happening staged two years before the decade actually ended, in Central
Park opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they paraded with a
coffin. Several months later, they performed "Club Nowhere" on the
sidewalk opposite the Copacabana on East 60th Street. With a velveteen
rope supplied by Glorious Foods as their only prop, they set up a club
on the street and offered free memberships to the people waiting in
line at the Copa. People liked the idea and began dancing on the
sidewalk, even though there was no music. The group went on to perform
in downtown clubs like King Tut's Wah Wah Hut and Dixon Place and at
spaces like the Performing Garage and Performance Space 122. A New
Vaudeville

The range of skills the trio has developed is quite
remarkable. All three members are accomplished percussionists who are
augmented in "Tubes" by two drummers, Larry Heinemann and Ian Pai. They
also play semi-improvised pieces in African-Latin style on their own
homemade wooden, vibraphonelike instruments. One of their funniest
skits involves tossing and catching objects in their mouths. They also
constructed the rotating tubes from tubing donated by Materials for the
Arts and motors they found in junkyards.

A particular inspiration has been the work of the popular New Vaudeville magicians Penn and Teller.

"I
love the way they turn themselves in as they go," Mr. Wink said.
"They'll do a trick and show you what they did, so that the piece is
not about pretending to have supernatural powers, but about the
sociological phenomenon of huckstering." Rock as Tribal Ritual

A
similar feeling of collaborating with the audience, rather than showing
off for it, goes to the core of the Blue Man Group's vision and links
it with what Mr. Wink described as "rock-and-roll utopianism."

"At
certain moments in its history, rock-and-roll has become a tribal
thing," Mr. Wink explained. "A lot of the impetus for Blueman came out
of our dissatisfaction with being audience members at rock shows where
we felt we were being kept at a distance, when punk and new-wave rock
were supposed to give people the freedom to reinvent themselves. We're
not geniuses, but we wanted to create something that we did feel was
happening, something that had a little passion. One of the first things
we discussed when we sat down together was how to form a new tribe."

La
Mama is at 74A East Fourth Street, Manhattan. Performances this weekend
are tonight and tomorrow at 10, and tickets are $12. The engagement has
just been extended through Feb. 9. Shows will be Thursdays through
Saturdays at 8 P.M. Reservations: (212) 475-7710.